Hacker News Reader

Comment by danbee | Hacker News Reader

The audio jack on Raspberry Pi's has always been terrible quality anyway. Ok in a pinch but it's not a huge loss. If you want quality analog output from a Pi you need a DAC hat.

View on HN

If you're using a pi you're already in a pinch, putting a dac on a pi seems alot like putting lipstick on a pig, the only scenario where it wouldn't be overkill is music streaming and i highly doubt thats even a majority of pi projects with audio

You can plug a 5€ USB audio adapter. That's what I have always been doing.

probably the way to go, but 'another thing to plug in' if you're building something for someone else to use

You need to plug in the headphones/speakers anyway, so it is just a little piece in between :)

this is true, but non-technical users (the likes of for whom my last pi project was built) get easily muddled!

Non technical users can get audio off hdmi i think.

not so convenient for "a box you plug into some speakers"

Yeah, that's true, and I did that when I built a 'streamer' from a Pi 2. It was great. At some point though the quality of the built-in jack did improve, and so when I built a sound/lighting effect box for a toy theatre with the Pi 4 it was plenty good enough to use, and made it simpler and cheaper to put together.

There are loads of cool projects for the Pi (synths etc) which chuck out audio and sound good enough through the built-in jack.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com